In 1992, a Los Angeles County parking control officer came upon a brown El Dorado Cadillac illegally parked next to the curb on street-sweeping day.
The officer dutifully wrote out a ticket. Ignoring the man seated at the driver's wheel, the officer reached inside the open car window and placed the $30 citation on the dashboard.
The driver of the car made no excuses. He didn’t argue with the police officer – and with good reason. The driver of the car had been shot ten to twelve hours before but was sitting up, stiff as a board, slumped slightly forward, with blood on his face. He was dead.
The officer, preoccupied with ticket-writing, was unaware of anything out of the ordinary. He got back in his car and drove away. (Greg Asimakoupoulos in Fresh Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching)
Sometimes, we get so preoccupied with people’s faults, we miss the real problem. We write tickets (so to speak), citing people for various offenses, but we don’t notice their real need.
People don’t need a citation; they need a Savior. We ALL do. We don’t help anybody by being critical or judgmental, and we don’t help ourselves by putting ourselves down either. Guilt never works to change lives. Guilt never makes us better people. It can only show us how bad we are.
So then, how can we become better people? How can we become less critical and more compassionate? How can we live the life God designed for us to live? How can we be all that God has called us to be? How can we do all the good things God has prepared for us to do? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Ephesians 2, Ephesians 2, where God shows us how.
Ephesians 2:1-2 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. (ESV)
The Apostle Paul, a Jew, reminds his Gentile audience where they came from; and if we want to be all that God has called us to be, then we too must first of all…
REMEMBER WHERE WE WERE before we knew Christ.
We must not forget where we came from.
We can’t forget that at one time we were dead in our sins. That means we were separated from God. Death in the Bible always means separation. Physical death is the separation of the spirit from the body. Spiritual death is the separation of us from God and all that is good, and that was our condition before we trusted Christ.
We were separated from God, because we were disobedient to God. We followed the ways of this world and of Satan himself.
In fact, not only were we pagan gentiles dead and disobedient. The Apostle Paul says that even all the so called “good people” were also dead and disobedient. Notice the subtle change in verse 3.
Ephesians 2:3a Among whom WE ALL once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind…
Even good Jews followed the sinful desires and thoughts of their own hearts. Now, that’s quite an admission for Paul, a so-called “righteous Jew,” to make. He’s basically saying, no matter what your background, if you grew up in a religious home or not, we were ALL separate from God because of our own sin. We were ALL dead in our sins because of our disobedience.
And as a result, we were doomed. We were destined for hell.
Ephesians 2:3b [We] were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
That word, “children,” implies an intimate relationship with wrath. At one time, we were not close to God’s love; we were by nature close to His rage against our sin. That was our condition before we came to know Jesus Christ. And even the thoughtful unbeliever recognizes this.
Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and the author of The Science of Good and Evil, writes:
I once had the opportunity to ask Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List, what he thought was the difference between Oskar Schindler, rescuer of Jews and hero of his story, and Amon Goeth, the Nazi commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp. His answer was revealing.
Not much, he said. Had there been no war, Mr. Schindler and Mr. Goeth might have been drinking buddies and business partners, morally obtuse, perhaps, but relatively harmless. What a difference a war makes, especially to the moral choices that lead to good and evil.
Shermer goes on to quote Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Michael Shermer, Something Evil Comes This Way)
Carl Sandburg put it this way: There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud. (Richard Hansen, “A Good Mystery,” Preaching Today Audio, issue 253)
That’s where we were before we knew Christ. By nature, we were “children of wrath.” All of us were separated from God because of our sin.
And if we want to live the life God designed for us to live, we cannot forget that. We must remember where we were before we knew Christ.
But we can’t dwell on that too long. For if we want to do all the good things God has prepared for us to do, we must also…
KNOW WHERE WE ARE TODAY with Christ.
We must realize where God has put us since we came to faith in Christ.
Ephesians 2:4-6 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (ESV)
God raised us from the dead and seated us with Christ. God gave life to those of us who were dead, but He didn’t leave us in the graveyard. No! He seated us with Christ in the heavenly realms.
After Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead (in John 11), the first thing we see them do is enjoy a meal together (in John 12). So it is with those of us who have trusted Christ. Like Lazarus, we have been called from the grave of sin to sit with Christ and enjoy his friendship.
The best thing about our new life in Christ is that we are WITH Christ. God took us out of the grave and seated us WITH Christ.
In the second year of George W. Bush’s presidency, the Republican Party mistakenly invited an Ohio prisoner to dinner with the president. It was a $2,500-a-plate fundraising dinner in Washington, D.C. The Republican Party sent the invitation and a letter from Vice President Cheney to Robert Kirkpatrick at the Belmont Correctional Institution in eastern Ohio. Kirkpatrick, 35, was sentenced the year before to nearly three years for drug possession and escape.
“I'm going to tell him that I'd be happy to attend,” said Kirkpatrick, “but he's going to have to pull some strings to get me there.” (John Bacon, “Guess Who's Not Coming to a Bush Dinner,” USA Today, 6-5-02, p.3A)
In essence that’s what God did for every one of us sinners who have come to faith in Christ. He “pulled some strings” to get us a seat right next to the Lord of the Universe, not at some time in the future, but right now, today!
Notice, in verse 6, the verbs are in the past tense. God raised us up with Christ (past tense) and seated us with him (also in the past tense). This is not something that WILL happen at some time in the future. This is something that has ALREADY happened to every believer in Christ. We have been seated WITH Christ ever since we trusted Him as our Savior. And that means we are right now with Christ in the place of all power. Satan no longer has any authority over us whatsoever.
In Ephesians 1, we see exactly where Christ is seated. Look at it. Ephesians 1:20 – God raised Christ from the dead and “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.” That means if we are seated with Christ, we are seated in that same place – “far above all rule and authority.”
We don’t have to “follow the ways of this world” any longer. We don’t have to listen to Satan, “the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience”, and we don’t even have to “live in the passions of our flesh” anymore. We’re above all that, because we are right now, today, seated with Christ. Hallelujah!
During World War II, MacDonald, who later became a professor in Glasgow, along with a Scottish chaplain, bailed out of an airplane behind German lines. They were put in a prison camp. A high wire fence separated the Americans from the British, and the Germans made it next to impossible for the two sides to communicate. MacDonald was put in the American barracks and the chaplain was housed with the British.
Every day the two men would meet at the fence and exchange a greeting. Unknown to the guards, the Americans had a little homemade radio and were able to get news from the outside, something more precious than food in a prison camp. Every day, MacDonald would take a headline or two to the fence and share it with the chaplain in the ancient Gaelic language, indecipherable to the Germans.
One day, news came over the little radio that the German High Command had surrendered and the war was over. MacDonald took the news to his friend, then stood and watched him disappear into the British barracks. A moment later, a roar of celebration came from the barracks.
Life in that camp was transformed. Men walked around singing and shouting, waving at the guards, even laughing at the dogs. You see, they were no longer under the authority of their German guards. Then, when the German guards finally heard the news three nights later, they fled into the dark, leaving the gates unlocked. (Ray Bakke, Leadership, Vol. 19, no. 2)
That’s a beautiful picture of what has happed to those of us who believe in Christ. Christ won the victory over sin and death on the cross. The enemy has already surrendered. Now, we are no longer under the authority of the old guards. We don’t have to listen to the world, the flesh, or the devil any more. Instead, we are free from their control and free to be all that God has called us to be.
If we want to live the life God designed for us to live, then we must know that in our hearts. we must understand where we are with Christ today. We must realize that we are right now seated with Him in the place of all authority, over every power and dominion, even that of Satan Himself. Hey, we don’t have to take his stuff anymore, because God has seated us with Christ.
Now, why did God do that? Why did God give those of us who were so low such a high position? Well, God did it to demonstrate his grace. He wanted everybody to know how much he loved us.
Ephesians 2:7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (ESV)
God wanted to make us trophies of His grace.
In the movie, A Walk to Remember, Jamie Sullivan (played by Mandy Moore) is the high school daughter of a widowed minister in the small town of Beaufort, North Carolina. Jamie is ridiculed by the “in crowd” for her conservative appearance and values, but she resolves to be her own person. Her high school yearbook recorded her primary ambition in life: “To witness a miracle.”
In the movie, Jamie is dying of leukemia. When Jamie befriends Landon Carter, one of those who mock her, her father and Landon's friends are concerned. But Jamie pours her life into Landon, helping him study, rallying him to memorize his lines for a school play, and introducing him to the wonder of astronomy. During this period, Landon falls in love with Jamie.
Eventually they marry. After a mere three months, Jamie dies. In honor of Jamie, Landon decides to attend college, where he distinguishes himself as a capable student. After graduation, he returns home to Beaufort. The first person he wants to see is Jamie's father.
As the two sit down, Landon announces he's been accepted into medical school. Then Landon says, “I'm sorry [Jamie] never got her miracle.”
The minister looks straight at Landon. “She did,” he said. “It was you.” (A Walk to Remember, Warner Brothers, 2002, written by Nicholas Sparks and Karen Janszen, directed by Adam Shankman, starting at 1:34:35)
Landon’s changed life was a miracle and a testimony to the power of unconditional love. So it is with us. We were once separated from God, dead in our sins and doomed to hell. Now, we are seated with Christ as testimonies to the miracle of God’s unconditional love.
You see, it is not guilt that changes lives; it is grace. And if we want to live the life God has prepared for us to live, then we must grasp that concept in our own hearts. We must know in our hearts how much God really does love us. We must remember where we came from. We must realize where we are today, and we must…
RECOGNIZE HOW WE GOT HERE.
We must understand how we got to where we are today. We were once separated from God. Now we are seated with Christ, and it is not because of anything we have done. It is only because we have been saved by grace.
Ephesians 2:8-10 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (ESV)
We have nothing to boast about. We are GOD’S workmanship, not our own, and we are where we are today only by the grace of God. We are where we are today only because God chose to love us when we didn’t deserve it.
I think it was Billy Graham who said, “When you see a turtle on a fence post, you know it didn’t get there by itself.” We got to where we are today only by the grace of God, who chose to put us in such a high position.
One ad for the U.S. Marines pictures a sword, and beneath it the words: “Earned, never given.” If you want to become a Marine, be prepared to earn that name through sacrifice, hardship, and training. If you get it, you deserve it.
But if you want to become a Christian, you must have the exact opposite attitude, for the message of the gospel is: “Given, never earned.”
You cannot save yourself, and God will not save anyone who tries to earn salvation. It is only for those who humbly receive it as a gift through faith in Jesus Christ. If you get it, you absolutely did not deserve it. (Craig Brian Larson, editor, Preaching Today.com)
My friends, if you’ve never done it before, I invite you right now to humbly receive God’s gift of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Just put your trust in Christ. Call upon Him and ask Him to save you from your sins, ask Him to give you a new position with him, and to change your life forever.
Trust Christ with your life and no longer find yourself separated from God. Instead, find yourself seated with Christ, all because He has saved you by His grace. Then, and only than, can you live the life God designed for you to live and impact your world for Christ.
Philip Yancey, in his book The Question that Never Goes Away, tells the story of John Marks, a producer for television's 60 Minutes. Marks went on a two-year quest to investigate evangelicals, the group he grew up in and later rejected. He wrote a book about the quest called Reasons to Believe: One Man's Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind.
The church's response to Hurricane Katrina turned the corner for him and became a key reason to believe. One Baptist church in Baton Rouge fed 16,000 people a day for weeks; another housed 700 homeless evacuees. Years after the hurricane, and long after federal assistance had dried up, a network of churches in surrounding states was still sending regular teams to help rebuild houses. Most impressively to Marks, all these church efforts crossed racial lines and barriers in the Deep South. As one worker told him, “We had whites, blacks, Hispanics, Vietnamese, good old Cajun … We just tried to say, hey, let's help people. This is our state. We'll let everybody else sort out that other stuff. We've got to cook some rice.”
Marks concludes: I would argue that this was a watershed moment in the history of American Christianity… nothing spoke more eloquently to believers, and to nonbelievers who were paying attention, than the success of a population of believing volunteers measured against the massive and near-total collapse of secular government efforts. The storm laid bare an unmistakable truth. More and more Christians have decided that the only way to reconquer America is through service. (Philip Yancey, The Question That Never Goes Away, Creative Trust Digital, Kindle Edition, 2013; www.PreachingToday.com)
The only way we’ll ever make any lasting difference in our world is through service. It is through those “good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them”.
If we want to live the life God designed for us to live, we must, 1st of all, remember where we came from. Then we must realize where we are today, and recognize how we got here – purely by God’s grace. For it is grace that changes lives, never guilt.
As a 17-year-old Anne Graham Lotz, the daughter of Billy and Ruth Graham, was involved in a car accident. Speeding carelessly down a windy mountain road, Anne smashed into her neighbor, Mrs. Pickering’s car. Anne was too afraid to tell her father about the accident, so for the rest of the day she kept avoiding him. When she finally came home, she tried to tiptoe around her dad, but there he was, standing in the kitchen.
Anne tells what happened next:
I paused for what seemed a very long moment frozen in time. Then I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck… I told him about my wreck – how I'd driven too fast and smashed into the neighbor's car. I told him it wasn't her fault; it was all mine. As I wept on his shoulder, he said four things to me:
“Anne, I knew all along about your wreck. Mrs. Pickering came straight up the mountain and told me – and I was just waiting for you to come and tell me yourself.”
“I love you.”
“We can fix the car.”
“You are going to be a better driver because of this.”
Anne says, "Sooner or later, all of us are involved in some kind of wreck – it may be your own fault or someone else's. When the damage is your fault, there's a good chance you'll be confronted by the flashing blue lights of the morality police. But my father gave me a deeper understanding of what it means to experience the loving, forgiving embrace of my heavenly Father.” (Adapted from Anne Graham Lotz, Wounded by God's People, Zondervan, 2013, pp. 155-156; www.PreachingToday.com)
My dear friends, if you have made a wreck of your life, stop avoiding your Heavenly Father. Run to Him and tell Him about your wreck. He already knows, and He still loves you. He can fix it; but best of all, He can fix YOU! His grace not only releases you from judgment for your sin; it makes you a better person. It absolutely changes your life.
Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
